Polar CS500+ cycle computer – in brief review

Polar’s diamond-headed unit is very user friendly, with a wealth of data, but expensive for a non-GPS device. Computer and sensor set-up is intuitive, and the big backlit screen is easy to read.

The single mode button and screen-rocking scrolling make it super-easy to operate with gloves or on rough terrain. As you’d hope from the original heart-rate monitor brand, the ‘soft’ HR belt gives excellent comfort and connection, and you can add a cadence sensor. Polar’s Datalink USB dongle lets it download to the polarpersonaltrainer.com site for effective coaching advice based on goals and overall training load. At the ‘dongled’ price though, most of the competition are GPS-driven, which means route data you can upload to Strava.